JIS Services

Minister of Health, Hon. Rudyard Spencer, has commended the staff of the Spanish Town Hospital for their “tremendous work” in seeing to the care of patients during and after the recent flood rains.
He was speaking to JIS News on Thursday (Oct.14) after touring sections of the Spanish Town Hospital, which were affected by floodwater from the heavy rains associated with Tropical Storm Nicole.
“I was told that they transformed the entire King of Spain building into accident and emergency since the accident and emergency section was completely flooded out. I am extremely proud of what they have done and this can only tell us that Jamaica has some fine, dedicated public servants,” Mr. Spencer stated.
Meanwhile, Parish Manager for the National Works Agency (NWA) St. Catherine, Sadiq Mahabear, told JIS News that work has already begun to clean the drains on the hospital compound to prevent further flooding.
“We are currently looking at solutions to improve the drainage system. We are doing a small ‘U’ drain to tie into the central drainage system so when the water comes or collects on the compound it will flow and take it out into an outlet drain,” he explained. He noted also that “we are trying to maintain the drains outside of the hospital grounds”, because “the invert of the outside drains is much higher than the invert inside the hospital so we wouldn’t want to encourage any flow of water coming into the hospital.”